This invention relates to a direct method and apparatus for creating a true print preview of a document which has been sent to the printer for printing. In particular, it relates to such a method and apparatus which, uniquely under the control of a printer, creates an exact electronic screen-display surrogate of such a document—a surrogate which precisely shows before printing how the particular printer involved will actually commit that document to an ink-on-paper hard copy.
The invention thus introduces and features printer-based, true-picture rendering of a document. Such rendering, significantly, costs neither paper nor ink, and effectively avoids the usual prior art mistake-bearing issues of ambiguity, surprise, and approximation—issues which have for years characterized mismatches between actual printed documents, and traditional pre-printing previews of these documents. Reference herein to a “printer” is intended to refer not only to “stand-alone”, “single-purpose”, dedicated printers per se, but also to so-called MFP (multifunction printing) devices with respect to which the invention has equal utility.
Briefly reviewing the prior art setting which the present invention addresses, a standard and widely employed option which has been offered for many years to users of document-generating applications in computers is the so-called print preview option. Typically, this option, when selected, results in the application, along with the associated printer driver, and occasionally other associated software, collectively generating a screen preview which is, at best, but a suggestion, and often a distant suggestion, of what the final printed document will actually look like. The usual document-producing applications cannot precisely know or detect the specific operational peculiarities and behaviors of the many different printers which may be used. A resulting consequence of this is that what the user typically sees in a requested preview is really just an approximation which often insufficiently matches what actually gets finally printed. Final printing parameters, such as fonts, positional formatting, how well a particular document will “fit to paper”, and other document-appearance matters, ultimately lie in the “hands” of the particular printer which is employed, and only that particular printer “knows” exactly what will come out in the final printing.
Given this approximation situation, correctly guessing how to style and build a document to avoid unwanted final printed characteristics is an uncertain “science”, and many times a user must go through several time-consuming trial iterations and unsatisfactory printings to achieve a satisfactory final look.
One approach which has been made in the past to resolve the print-preview issues mentioned above involves installing in a computer suitable additional programming software which is intended to emulate the expected behavior of the print engine in the particular printer. Such an approach is costly, involves only a single-style printer, and still only offers a best-guess approximation of how the particular employed printer will perform. Printers, even though nominally identical in model numbers, and supposedly armed with identical print engines, are individuals, and as such often have printing personality quirks which cannot be predicted, and confidently and accurately reflected in after-market installed emulation software. Additionally, the typical single-printer characteristics of such added emulation software make that software effectively useless when a change is made to a different printer.
Thus, the two traditional approaches employed in the creation of a print preview—(a) generation of a preview effectively by the document-creating application and the installed printer driver, and (b) generation of a preview under the control of an extra installed software emulator of an associated printer's print engine—do not often work very well.
According to the invention, and by way of sharp contrast with the prior art, the responsibility for generating a document preview is given directly to the very printer which is to print the document, rather than, as is currently conventional, to the computer-resident application which created the document, or to an installed surrogate print-engine emulator.
With one, or several, conventional document-creation applications installed in a user's computer (also referred to herein as computer structure), the user creates a document, and “sends” that document, by way of computer-sent instructions, to an associated printer. Such an associated computer and printer constitutes a computer environment herein. Effectively, these sent instructions tell the printer to create an appropriate print-control data stream (or collection) in its controller for ultimate use by the printer's print engine to print directly a hard copy of the document.
Along with the sent document, the user requests that the printer, before printing a document hard copy, effectively create electronically, and on an appropriately associated display device with a display screen (a viewing instrumentability), a visual-surrogate preview of the just sent document. The user may either simply request such a preview without implementing any additional document-appearance or other protocol options, or may, according to one form of the invention, choose various options, such as those selected from a list including, for example, document data format, printing color format, gray-scale, compression, resolution, thumbnail preview representation, and others.
With or without such selected options, the printer controller, ultimately creates an appropriate print-control data stream (or collection). This data-stream (collection) the printer may then store on its own internal storage structure, such as a hard drive, if it has one, and/or from the collection create what is called herein a related print-preview data stream that is effectively an exact copy of the print-control data stream. In one embodiment of the invention, the printer sends this print-preview data stream back through the computer to the associated screen-display device, either right away, or appropriately later if internal data storage has taken place. In some instances, such as, for example, where the printer is one which has its own screen-display hardware, this “sending” activity may take place entirely within the printer per se.
The display device then presents on its screen to the user an absolutely true preview of the created document, all selected options implemented, and just as the document, if no revisions are made, will be printed into hard copy by the printer's print engine. Such a preview gives the user precise and accurate information from which predictably implementable revisions can intelligently be made—all before actual printing. All behavior peculiarities and nuances linked to the particular printer will have played their respective roles in the preview which the user sees.
In a manner of speaking, therefore, the present invention responds to a print preview request by instructing and asking the printer itself to create such a preview, using the very same printer-generated, print-engine control data which would, in the absence of such a request, directly control the printing of a hard copy. The actual “voice and signature” of the printer therefore “speaks” and appears in such a preview—a preview which is absolutely true, without uncertainty, without ambiguity, without error and without unwelcome surprise.
The method and structure of the invention can work readily in many computer environments, including those wherein (a) a computer, a printer and a display device are separate components, (b) a computer and display are integrated (as in a laptop computer unit), (c) a printer and a display device are integrated, (d) the printer is incorporated in an MFP device, and so on.
These and other new and distinguishing features of the present invention will become more fully apparent as the description thereof which now follows is read in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.